Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 9.djvu/231

 I F I O 221 draw his attention froih the stirring drama which was then being unfolded in the south-eastern corner of Europe. &quot; I conversed much,&quot; he says, &quot; with everybody I met who had visited Greece, read all the works of modern travellers, and associated a great deal with the only Greek who was then studying at Gottingen.&quot; In 1823 he resolved to visit the country personally, in order that ho might judge for himself of the condition of the people and the prospects of tiie war. In November accordingly he arrived in Cephalonia, where he first met Lord Byron, by whom, as well as by Sir Charles Napier, the British resident, he was vary kindly received. Shortly afterwards he was landed at Pyrgos, and during the next fourteen months, which were spent partly at Athens and partly at Missolonghi, he greatly improved his knowledge of the language, history, and antiquities of the country. While soon led to form a very unfavourable opinion of the rapacity, selfishness, and iucompetency of the Greek leaders, both civil and military, he by no means lost his enthusiasm for the cause of Greek independence. A severe att ick of fever, however, combined with other circumstances to make a change of scene de sirable in December 1824. The rest of that winter accordingly and the spring of 1825 were spent in Rome, Naples, and Sicily. After spending a summer at Castle Toward, Argyllshire, he went to Edinburgh, where he attended classes in the university, and passed his examina tion in civil law with a view to being called to the Scottish bar. His unquenched enthusiasm for Greece, however, made it impossible for him to resist the pressing invitation of his friend Hastings that he should return to that country, and thenceforward, if we except a few brief journeys (one to England in 1826 in order to secure the services of some competent engineers), the remainder of his life was wholly spent in the land of his adoption. He took part in the unsuccessful operations of Lord Cochrane and Sir Richard Church for the relief of Athens in 1827. When independ ence had been secured in 1329, under the presidency of Capodistrta^, he was induced by the prospect of peaceful progress to buy a landed estate in Attica, hoping in this way to aid in putting the country &quot; into the road tint leads to a rapid increase of production, population, and material improvement.&quot; These hopes were not realized ; all his efforts for the introduction of a, better system of agriculture ended in failure ; within a very few years he found that he had lost his capital as well as his labour in his generous but ill-rewarded enthusiasm. Only when it had become t)j plain to him that Greece could be served in no other way, did he form the resolve of giving himself to the literary work which occupied, somewhat sadly, all the remainder of his life. &quot; Had the hopes with which I joined the cause of Greece in 1823 been fulfilled, it is not probable that I should have abandoned the active duties of life, and the noble task of labouring to improve the land, for the sterile task of recording its misfortunes.&quot; So he writes in 1855. His first publications were The Hellenic Kingdom and the Greek Nation (London, 1836) ; Essai sur Les principes de binqiie appliques a, Vetat actuel de la Grece (Athens, 1836) ; and Remarks on the Topography of Oropia and Diacria, with a map (Athens, 1838). The first instalment of his great historical work appeared in 1844 (the 2d edition in 1857) under the title Greece under the Romans : a Historical View of the Condition of the Greek Nat ion from the time of its Conquest by tJie Romans until the Extinction of the Roman Empire in the East. Meanwhile he had been qualifying himself still further for his task by travel as well as by reading ; he undertook several tours (one in the company of Karl Hitter) to various quarters of the Levant ; and as the result of one of them he published a volume On the Site of the Holy Sepulchre ; with a plan of Jerusalem (London, 1847). The History of the Byzantine and Greek Empires from 716-1453 was completed in 1854. It was speedily followed by the History of Greece under Othoman and Venetian Domination (1856), and by the History of the Greek Revolution (Edinburgh, 1861). In weak health, and conscious of failing energy, he now gave the last years of hi life to the task of revising, supplement ing, and partly rewriting his great work. From 1864 to 1870 he was also correspondent of the Times newspaper, and at various periods he contributed articles to Blackicood s Zfagazine, the At/iena&amp;gt;um, and the Saturday Revieiv. He was a member of several learned societies ; and in 1854 he received from the university of Edinburgh the honorary degree of LL.l). He died at Athens on the 26th of January 1875. A new edition of his History, &quot;revised throughout, and in part rewritten, with considerable addi tions, by the author, and edited by the Rev H. F. Tozer, M.A.,&quot; with a portrait by Jeens, was issued from the Oxford Clarendon press in 1877. It includes a brief but extremely interesting fragment of an autobiography of the author. As an historian Finlay had the merit, which was also to some extent the advantage, of entering upon a field of research that had been previously wholly ne glected by English writers, Gibbon alone being a partial exception. He brought to his work many admirable quali ties ; as a, student he was laborious, as a scholar he was accurate, as a thinker he was both acute and profound ; and in all that lie wrote he was unswerving in his loyalty to the principles of constitutional government and to the cause of liberty and justice. The portion of his work which extends from 146 B.C. to 1453 A.I&amp;gt;. has been translated into German. FIORENZUOLA, a small town of Italy, in the province of Piacenza, about 1 3 miles from the city of that name, on the right of the Arda, which is there crossed by a noble bridge. The ancient towers in the piazza, the collegiate church of S. Fiorenzo with its beautiful carved work, and the old Palazzo Grossi are the principal objects of interest. The town is of no small antiquity, and in the 9th century it was the scene of a sanguinary battle between Bercnger of Italy and Rudolph II. of Burgundy. The Scotti, the Yisconti, the Pallavicini, and the Farnesi were successively in possession of the fee. In the vicinity are the ruins of the old city of Veleia, which was overthrown by a landslip in the 4th century. Population of the town in 1871, 3295 ; of the commune, 6730. FIORILLO, JOHANN DOMINICUS (1748-1821), German painter and historian of art, was born at Hamburg, October 13, 1748. He received his first instructions in art at an academy of painting at Baireuth; and in 1761, to continue his studies, he went first to Rome, where for four years he was the pupil of Batoni, and next to Bologna, where he studied under Bigari and Lulli. He distinguished himself sufficiently to attain in 1769 admission to the academy of that city. Returning soon after to Germany, he obtained the appointment of historical painter to the court of Bruns wick. In 1781 he removed to Gottingen, occupied himself as a drawing-master, and was named in 1784 keeper of the collection of prints at the university library. He was appointed professor extraordinary in the philosophical faculty in 1799, and ordinary professor in 1813. During this period he had made himself known as a writer by the publication of his Geschichte dtr zeichnenden Kilnste, in 5 vols. (1798-1808). This was followed in 1815 to 1820 by the Geschichte der zeichnenden Kiimte in Deutschland und den vereinirften Niederlanden, in 4 vols. These works, though not attaining to any high mark of literary excellence, are esteemed for the information collected in them, especially on the subject of art in the later Middle Ages. Fiorillo practised his art almost till his death, tut has left no memorable masterpiece. The most noticeable of l.is